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"If confirmed, Linda McMahon will dismantle public education as we know it to fund tax cuts for billionaires," one union leader warned.
Critics of U.S. President Donald Trump's plans for the Department of Education pointed to billionaire GOP megadonor Linda McMahon's Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday as the latest proof that the Republican administration intends to destroy public schools.
McMahon, accused of "enabling sexual abuse of children" as World Wrestling Entertainment CEO, appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions as the education secretary nominee despite Trump making clear that he wants to shutter the department and billionaire Elon Musk—who is trying to obliterate the federal bureaucracy as chair of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—claiming last week that "it doesn't exist" anymore.
"Education is meant to be the great equalizer for our children, not a great investment opportunity for the billionaires ransacking our federal government."
"Most of us believe every student deserves the opportunity, resources, and support to reach their full potential no matter where they live, the color of their skin, or how much their family earns," said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union. "But we didn't hear any of that today. As I travel around the country, parents and educators tell me their schools need more resources and more opportunities that will help students live into their brilliance. They do not want to gut public education or public schools."
She warned that "if confirmed, Linda McMahon will dismantle public education as we know it to fund tax cuts for billionaires. She will push vouchers that take funding from our public schools, where 90% of all children and 95% of those with disabilities learn and grow. Public funds should stay in our public schools. Our students need an education secretary committed to fully funding the programs that can help them reach their full potential, not siphoning money to send to private schools."
"The Senate must reject Linda McMahon as secretary of education. The agenda is clear and dangerous," Pringle argued. "Whether in Washington, with legal actions and lawsuits, or through grassroots actions in communities across the country, educators will continue to protect our students from this reckless agenda."
While the GOP-controlled Senate seems likely to confirm McMahon—so far, the chamber hasn't blocked any "fundamentally unfit" and "profoundly unqualified" Trump nominees—union and community leaders, educators, parents, and students have still pressured lawmakers to oppose McMahon and battle Trump's assault on public education.
They even braved winter weather at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday for a related rally. MomsRising executive director and CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner called McMahon "wholly unqualified" and declared that "President Trump's education plan puts our children at risk and has grave implications for our workforce and our economy."
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten, who was also at the rally, pointed out that "inside the Education Department, the world's richest man and his minions have been rifling through 45 million people's private student loan accounts and feeding the data into artificial intelligence in one of the biggest data hacks in U.S. history."
In response, AFT and unions sued multiple departments and the Office of Personnel Management "for violating the Privacy Act by improperly disclosing the sensitive records of millions of Americans to DOGE staff," Weingarten explained Wednesday. "And tomorrow, we hope Linda McMahon will discuss what she'll do to secure the personal data of veterans who receive benefit payments, current and former federal employees whose confidential employment files reside in OPM's system, and teachers whose pathway to the classroom was reliant on student loans to pay for college tuition. The American people deserve to know what she'll do to kick Elon Musk and DOGE out of the Education Department, out of our schools, and out of our data."
During the Senate hearing, "Democrats repeatedly grilled McMahon on her willingness to follow orders from Trump or Elon Musk even if they run afoul of congressional mandates," The Associated Pressreported, noting that the nominee "played down the work" of DOGE and "pledged to uphold the law and show deference to Congress."
McMahon also addressed the administration's push to shut down the department. According to the AP:
"We'd like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education," McMahon said. But closing the department "certainly does require congressional action."
McMahon said the president's goal is not to defund key programs, but to have them "operate more efficiently." But she questioned whether some programs should be moved to other agencies. Enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, she suggested, "may very well rest better" in the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency that already has oversight of disability issues. The agency's Office for Civil Rights, she said, could fit better at the Justice Department.
Responding to the hearing in a statement, Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, said that "Linda McMahon's testimony was nothing more than two hours worth of gaslighting. McMahon had the opportunity to state clearly and unequivocally that she will protect students, borrowers, and working families across the nation from the chaos that has already ensued as a result of President Trump and Elon Musk's work to make their Project 2025 agenda the law of the land. She did not."
"When asked whether she would abide by a directive by President Trump that breaks a law, her nonanswer spoke volumes. It is clear that Linda McMahon's blind loyalty to President Trump will guide her decision-making should she be confirmed to serve as the nation's highest education official—and our students and communities will pay the price," she cautioned.
Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, an AFT affiliate, was a similarly critical, saying that "today's hearing made clear that Donald Trump is not trying to roll the country back to 1950, he is trying to roll us back to 1850. McMahon's dog whistles, her promotion of segregationist school choice policies, and her boss' commitment to converting civil rights protections into tools to police students are all reversals of what formerly enslaved Africans fought for and created during Reconstruction after the Civil War."
"Donald Trump and whoever becomes his secretary should think twice before dismantling the Department of Education," she continued. "As a social studies teacher, it's incumbent on me to provide a brief civics lesson: We have a system of checks and balances that prevents them from doing so. But more importantly, this isn't an obscure federal office. This is a backbone of the government that millions of families with children in our public schools rely on."
"By continuing to come for our public schools, they are further angering the Black families who count on civil rights protections, the families of children with disabilities who rely on federal standards, the families in poverty who rely on federal support, and anyone who is sickened to see queer and transgender students targeted and bullied by the federal government," she added. "Education is meant to be the great equalizer for our children, not a great investment opportunity for the billionaires ransacking our federal government."
A protester disrups of the Senate confirmation hearing for Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of education, in Washington, D.C. on February 13, 2025. (Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
Several protesters interrupted Thursday's hearing, including to express concerns related to the Individual With Disabilities Education Act and the Trump administration's attacks on LGBTQ+ youth.
One lawmaker who took aim at Trump and McMahon during the event—and was publicly thanked by the AFT for doing so—was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the committee's ranking member.
"In America, we must not allow our educational system to become a two-tier system," Sanders said, calling it "absurd" to provide vouchers for families to send their children to private schools rather than public ones—the focus of a recent Trump executive order.
Sanders also sounded the alarm about using taxpayer money for such vouchers in a four-minute video from his office stressing that "Donald Trump is dead set on destroying public education in this country."
Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, warned of the long-term consequences, saying after the hearing that "starving cash-strapped states of critical public education resources is a recipe for generational failure."
"The Trump-McMahon-Project 2025 agenda would leave millions of kids behind and further rig the system against low-income communities," he continued. "McMahon would be just the latest to join the Trump administration's billionaire club, which has made no allusions about its plans to let the wealthy cut to the head of the line while working people wait for the scraps."
Carrk also pointed to her time in the wrestling industry, declaring that "Linda McMahon puts on quite a show of confidence, but her alleged actions knowing about and mishandling the sexual abuse of children at her corporation should give no one confidence that she would enforce Title IX sex discrimination protections as education secretary."
"Every student deserves fully funded neighborhood public schools that give them a sense of belonging and prepare them with the lessons and life skills they need to follow their dreams and reach their full potential."
Leaders of the nation's two largest teachers unions on Wednesday sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order that would direct federal funding toward enabling families to send their children to private rather than public K-12 schools.
Before the White House released the order Wednesday evening, multiple media outlets obtained and reported on related documents and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Fox News that Trump intended to sign that order and others.
In response to reporting on Trump's order promoting "school choice," as right-wing advocates call it, the National Education Association (NEA)—the largest U.S. teachers union, representing over 3 million workers— released a statement lambasting the president's plan to "steal money from public school students to fund private school vouchers."
NEA president Becky Pringle declared that "every student deserves fully funded neighborhood public schools that give them a sense of belonging and prepare them with the lessons and life skills they need to follow their dreams and reach their full potential. Instead of stealing taxpayer money to fund private schools, we should focus on public schools—where 90% of children, and 95% of children with disabilities, in America, attend—not take desperately needed funds away from them. If we are serious about doing what is best for students, let's reduce class sizes to give our students more one-on-one attention and increase salaries to address the teacher and staff shortages."
"The bottom line is vouchers have been a catastrophic failure everywhere they have been tried," she continued. "President Trump is using his Project 2025 playbook to privatize education because he knows vouchers have repeatedly been a failure in Congress. Parents, educators, and voters know what students need—and vouchers are never the solution. In fact, when voters have a say about vouchers, they have been soundly rejected—time and again—at the ballot box. Just this past November, voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska overwhelmingly said no to vouchers."
"We know vouchers take money away from neighborhood public schools. We know students with disabilities depend on these same public schools. We know that voucher programs leave out wide swaths of students, especially Black and brown students as well as those living in rural areas with no or limited access to private schools. And we know this stunt is meaningless without the consent of Congress," she said. "So, we are putting all anti-public education politicians on notice: If you try to come for our students, for our schools, and for our communities, NEA members will mobilize and will defeat vouchers again."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which has 1.8 million members, similarly stressed that "Americans of all political stripes want safe and welcoming public schools where kids are engaged and have the knowledge and skills to thrive in careers, college, and life. This plan is a direct attack on all that parents and families hold dear; it's a ham-fisted, recycled, and likely illegal scheme to diminish choice and deny classrooms resources to pay for tax cuts for billionaires."
"We already know that vouchers go mostly to wealthy families whose kids are already in private school. This order hijacks federal money used to level the playing field for poor and disadvantaged kids and hands it directly to unaccountable private operators—a tax cut for the rich," she explained. "It diminishes community schools and the services they provide. It dilutes crucial literacy and arts education grants. It takes an ax to the Department of Defense schools that are a global model for student success. It weakens Bureau of Indian Education schools already struggling due to underfunding and neglect."
Specifically, according to CBS News, "the executive order directs the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, to submit a plan to Mr. Trump for how military families can use Defense Department funds to send their kids to the school of their choosing."
"More broadly, it directs the Department of Education to prioritize school choice programs through its discretionary grant programs, and orders the Department of Health and Human Services to issue guidance on how states receiving block grants for families and children can use those funds to support private and faith-based institutions," the outlet reported.
CBS added:
The executive order also directs the Department of Education to issue guidance to states on how to use federal funding formulas—which determine how much money to allocate to districts and schools—to support their K-12 scholarship programs.
The interior secretary, when confirmed, must also submit a plan to the president outlining how families with students at Bureau of Indian Education schools can use federal money to send those children to a school of their family's choosing. About 47,000 American Indian and Alaska Native students are enrolled in Bureau of Indian Education schools.
Like Pringle, Weingarten highlighted that "voters overwhelmingly rejected billionaire-backed voucher scams in November—even in states Trump won—because they know vouchers hurt student achievement, bankrupt state budgets, and deny opportunity to rural and urban communities."
"They spurned extremist school board candidates and opted again and again for levies and ballot initiatives to improve public schools," she said. "While this order will succeed in uniting parents and educators in a righteous effort to defend public schools, it is unfortunate that we have to spend time fighting for—rather than strengthening—the institutions 90% of American kids attend."
The union leaders' comments came just hours after the National Assessment of Educational Progress released data on student performance in mathematics and reading for 2024—which Weingarten responded to by saying: "We don't need stagnant NAEP scores to show us the headwinds children are facing, regardless of whether they attend public or private school. Rather than waiting for lagging indicators such as NAEP, AFT members are fighting every day for 'real solutions' to create safe, welcoming, and joyful schools that engage kids and close the achievement gap between the lowest and highest performers."
Trump's order and the related backlash also came after the president said on his Truth Social platform Tuesday afternoon: "Congratulations to Tennessee Legislators who are working hard to pass School Choice this week, which I totally support. We will very soon be sending Education BACK TO THE STATES, where it belongs. It is our goal to bring Education in the United States to the highest level, one that it has never attained before. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
Trump has repeatedly teased fully dismantling the federal Department of Education, but he has also nominated its potential next leader: scandal-plagued former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon. She still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans.
In addition to the measure that will shift money toward private schools, Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order "eliminating federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology," and "protecting parental rights."
As LawDork's Chris Geidner summarized, the latter measure "attempts to restrict all schools that receive federal funds from protecting trans and nonbinary students or supporting diversity measures, while at the same time purporting to advance 'patriotic education.'"
One critic argued Harris would risk alienating "precisely the people she needs to ensure her victory over Trump" if she picks Pennsylvania's governor as her running mate.
Reports that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is leaning toward selecting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate have sparked warnings from progressives who say his record and policy positions on key issues—from Palestine to public schools to climate—are cause for serious alarm and should be disqualifying.
Earlier this week, dozens of progressive leaders from across the United States wrote in a letter to Harris that Shapiro's "support for school vouchers is in direct conflict with our teachers union allies and the Democratic Party Platform, threatening to undermine labor support" in a general election matchup with Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The letter's signatories recommended Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear as possible alternatives to Shapiro, who last year relented to pressure and vetoed a school voucher program that he previously supported.
The Philadelphia Inquirerreported last month that Shapiro "says school vouchers are still a priority for him."
"Democrats need a credible and respected voice that has a track record of winning over and exciting an electorate, especially the ability to turn out young voters, immigrants, and independents in swing states," reads the progressives' letter, signed by the chair of the California Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus, the head of the Nevada Democratic Party, the executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, a member of the Ohio Democratic Party's executive committee, and others.
"Shapiro has... done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights."
Shapiro's attacks on pro-Palestine demonstrators and uncritical support for Israel—as well as his support for Pennsylvania's anti-boycott, divestment, and sanctions law—have also drawn progressive ire.
"Shapiro has... done far more than most Democrats to attack pro-Palestine antiwar demonstrators, in ways that call into question his basic commitment to First Amendment rights," writer David Klion argued in The New Republic last week, noting that the Pennsylvania governor compared protesters rallying against Israel's genocide in Gaza to the Ku Klux Klan.
"Then, in an executive order, Shapiro updated his administration's code of conduct to forbid state employees from engaging in 'scandalous or disgraceful' behavior, a vaguely worded instruction that civil libertarians immediately interpreted as threatening pro-Palestine speech," added Klion, who warned Harris that picking Shapiro could "discourage precisely the people she needs to ensure her victory over Trump."
A coalition of pro-Palestine groups has launched a website dubbing Shapiro "Genocide Josh" and warning Harris against picking him as her running mate.
"The left must unite over the next four weeks to ensure that America doesn't fall down the path of fascism, authoritarianism, and runaway corporatism," the website states. "It is in Harris' and the Democrats' best interests to listen to their base and ensure that both their new VP pick and their platform support the majority of Democrats and Americans who want social and economic justice for workers and an immediate cease-fire in Palestine."
Progressive organizers Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, co-founders of the advocacy group RootsAction, warned in aCommon Dreams op-ed Monday that if Harris "chooses a running mate who intensely connects her to Biden's policies on the Gaza war that are so unpopular with much of the Democratic base, party unity—and the chances of defeating Trump—would be undermined."
On top of his attacks on pro-Palestinian demonstrators and promotion of school vouchers, Shapiro has also faced criticism for supporting corporate tax cuts.
The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote Thursday that Shapiro is currently "trying to accelerate an already scheduled cut" to Pennsylvania's corporate tax rate "from 9.9% to 4.9%" as Democrats at the national level push for a repeal of Trump's massive tax cuts for big business and the rich.
Harris herself attacked Trump during an Atlanta rally earlier this week for wanting to "give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations."
Harris is expected to announce her vice presidential pick ahead of a scheduled rally Tuesday in Philadelphia, part of a broader campaign swing through pivotal battleground states. According toPolitico, a Harris aide "cautioned against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour," pushing back on speculation that the event's location confirms Shapiro will be Harris' running mate.
A survey released earlier this week showed that Trump is narrowly leading Harris in Pennsylvania, and it's far from clear that picking Shapiro as her running mate would help her win the state.
"Other names in the mix include Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg," Politico reported earlier this week. "Shapiro said on Tuesday that he had not spoken to Harris since July 21, the day that Biden dropped out."
Will Bunch argued in a column for The Philadelphia Inquirer "that it's no wonder that progressives seem to be lining up in the VP contest behind Minnesota's Walz, who like Shapiro has some policy wins on cherished liberal issues like expanding free school lunches but isn't lugging around political baggage like the Pennsylvania governor."
"Whether Harris, said to have close ties to Shapiro, sees it the same way will tell us a lot about her White House bid," Bunch added.